As DEQ considers permits, environmental groups call for halt to NC wood pellet industry
A group of environmental organizations urged Gov. Roy Cooper to deny any future permits for the wood pellet industry, which sees North Carolina trees chopped down and ground up to replace coal in European power plants.
Wood pellets were billed as a cleaner-burning replacement for coal by industry officials, but environmentalists and some scientists have raised concerns that burning the pellets actually releases higher levels of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than the fuel it is replacing. And in North Carolina, community members have said it is impossible to balance the environmental impacts with the jobs wood pellet plants bring to some of the state’s poorest counties.
“We are not supposed to burn these in North Carolina but there’s not a problem with selling millions of pounds of wood pellets to other countries. But we do lose our forests,” Donna Chavis, the senior fossil fuels campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said during a press conference Wednesday.
As part of their petition to Cooper and other administration officials, environmental groups called for the N.C. Department of Commerce to halt any subsidies or grants for energy projects that have not already been identified in last year’s Executive Order 80. The groups also called on the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to create a report about the impact the wood pellet industry has on the climate and nearby communities, as well as to update the method it uses to determine the impact the industry has on the climate.
Belinda Joyner of Concerned Citizens of Northampton County said, “I’m not against economic development, I had to work. But I’m against economic development that’s going to harm my health. I’m against economic development that’s going to take away my livelihood.”
In a statement emailed to The News & Observer, Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said the governor is committed to clean energy, pointing to the emission reduction targets that are part of the governor’s sustainable energy plan outlined in Executive Order 80.
“(Cooper) believes environmental and equity impacts on communities must be taken into account in job creation and he expects government officials to rigorously follow the law when regulating this industry and its environmental impacts,” Porter wrote.
The N.C. Clean Energy Plan plan also says that accounting for the wood pellet industry’s impact on carbon emissions is difficult and that “large scale use” of the state’s trees to achieve energy goals overseas based on existing carbon reduction models should be questioned.
North Carolina’s wood pellet industry was spurred by a 2009 European Union decision to shift 20% of its energy generation to renewable sources by 2020, with half of that coming from biomass, or energy that originally started as plants. According to the European Union’s decision, wood pellets are carbon neutral, The News & Observer reported, because newly planted trees will replace the ones that are burned for fuel, ultimately absorbing any CO2 created by the pellets that were burned.
The wood pellet industry entered North Carolina in 2011, with Enviva’s mill in Ahoskie. Since then, the company has also opened mills in Hamlet, Sampson County’s Faison and Northampton County’s Garysburg. North Carolina’s annual capacity of nearly 2.1 million tons of wood pellets is the United States’ highest, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
DEQ is considering revised permits for the Faison and Garysburg facilities.
Emily Zucchino, the director of community engagement for Dogwood Alliance, said the Northampton permit is relatively standard, but does pose an opportunity for DEQ to protect nearby communities. Rev. Richie Harding, the director of Gaston Youth, called on DEQ to require Enviva to control dust from the mill.
“When you have a facility that’s placed directly in the middle of a community, there’s a lot of things that’s going on with the people that live around it,” Harding said, adding that people who live around the plant need to clear dust off of their windshields any time they come outside.
On May 30, 2019, Enviva and the Southern Environmental Law Center settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of Clean Air Carolina requiring that the pellet company add devices to curb emissions at its plant in Hamlet. The next day, DEQ and Enviva announced a similar agreement for Enviva’s plant in Faison, leading to the permit modifications that are now under consideration at that facility.
If the new permit is approved, Enviva would see potential emissions of volatile organic compounds cut by more than 700 tons per year, from more than 830 tons a year currently to around 110 tons. Carbon monoxide emissions would be roughly halved.
However, the plant could emit eight more tons per year of fine particles that are about a thirtieth the size of a human hair. Those particles, also known as PM2.5, can get deep into a person’s lungs and even into the bloodstream, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, making them “the greatest risk to health” of all particulate matter pollution.
Another pellet company, Active Energy Renewable Power, received an air permit last August for a facility in Lumberton. The company announced plans to create a new kind of wood pellet, called CoalSwitch, at the Lumberton facility.
Ensuing months, however, have brought legal challenges from the SELC based on alleged pollution of the Lumber River. And earlier this month, DEQ issued the company a notice of violation after inspectors found three emissions control devices at the facility that were not part of any permit.
Active Energy applied for a new air permit in late April, but, according to emails published on DEQ’s website, that application is on hold while environmental officials wait for more information from the company.
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 4:07 PM with the headline "As DEQ considers permits, environmental groups call for halt to NC wood pellet industry."